Amazon have launched an app for drivers delivering to their fulfilment centres – Amazon Relay helps drivers save time at Amazon Fulfillment and Sort Center by using the app to pre-register loads and get gate passes on their smartphones.
How Amazon Relay works
Download the FREE Amazon Relay app. When picking up or dropping off at Amazon facilities, enter load information to get your Gate Pass in advance. Once you arrive at the gate, simply scan your Gate Pass for fast, easy check in.
At facilities with designated Amazon Relay Lanes, use the app to get exclusive access to lanes reserved for drivers with gate passes. Just follow the signs and scan your gate pass.
What does Amazon Relay mean for retailers and carriers
For carriers the benefits are obvious, Amazon Relay will save time with manual paperwork and with fast access lanes drivers can bypass queues as they’ll already have a gate pass giving entry to the Amazon warehouse facility that they are delivering to.
For retailers, if you use a carrier who makes use of the Amazon Relay app then you’ll know your goods will get into the site faster with a pre-booked pass.
Longer term, this has wider reaching implications for the delivery industry. If Amazon can match drivers with loads and pre-approved gate passes then there’s no reason why one day they won’t market this technology to third party warehouses. Instantly one thinks of larger retailers who qualify for Seller Fulfilled FBA, but Amazon have a habit of developing technology inhouse and then selling it as a solution.
Amazon needed warehouses so they built them and then rent them to merchants under their FBA program. Amazon needed vast computing resources so they built a cloud infrastructure and rent it out to just about anyone under their AWS banner. In recent years we’ve seen Amazon building out Amazon Logistics both for last mile delivery partnering with local courier companies and for long distance freight with their own planes and ships. If Amazon can build a reliable useful freight delivery app for hauliers then there’s no reason not to think that one day they’ll sell the solution as a service.
One Response
Why does it make you think of ‘Seller Fulfilled FBA’ as far as I know there’s no such thing, the only place google can find the term used is in articles by you… on Tamebay…
Do you mean “Seller Fulfilled Prime” ? Which is a real thing.